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Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

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Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#41

Post by usrusr »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #4

I recently met a European space startup founder and was surprised to learn how much space innovation is happening in Europe with ESA. Europe wants to become less depended on SpaceX and NASA, and is heavily investing there. More funding + strong aerospace programs at universities like TU Munich has led to companies like ISAR Aerospace (SpaceX competitor), which is great to see.

At this point, calling ISAR a competitor to SpaceX feels a bit like calling Pringles a competitor to TSMC, but it's certainly good to see some movement happening.

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#42

Post by tcumulus »

IshKebab wrote: post #34
SirHumphrey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, at least in my experience with EU projects, they tend to be much more restrictive with data sharing than equivalent US institutions: e.g. a lot of paid EUMET data has publicly available NOAA equivalents - though usually of worse quality.

Not sure why you're being down-voted. US weather models are free. EU models are not.

Depends on which model. Only really the ECMWF weather model is not fully free. The German, French, Dutch, ... models are all free (regional and global models). Of course, these global models are generally less accurate than ECMWF, still ECMWF has a lot of free data available too. US models are also freely available, and quite easy to work with (as opposed to some European ones).

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#43

Post by panick21_ »

simgt wrote: post #11
hubraumhugo wrote: post #4

I recently met a European space startup founder and was surprised to learn how much space innovation is happening in Europe with ESA. Europe wants to become less depended on SpaceX and NASA, and is heavily investing there. More funding + strong aerospace programs at universities like TU Munich has led to companies like ISAR Aerospace (SpaceX competitor), which is great to see.

maiaspace ( https://www.maia-space.com/ ) also intends to compete with SpaceX and is an Ariane spin-off, they're meant to do their first launch this year and start putting satellites in LEO in 27

There were once about 300 small rocket companies. About 250 of them are dead by by now.

The Europeans were late to the game, and their companies got some late investment.

Out of those 300 companies basically 0 of them have actually made money with rockets. Companies like RocketLab pivoted to in-space stuff and that's where they actually make money.

Pretty much every single small rocket company has lost money with small rockets and pivots to larger rockets where there is more demand because of constellations. But in Europe, that will be near impossible because of the Ariane monopoly.

And closing the case on reuse for small rockets is even more difficult.

I really think calling companies that have barley done a test-launch 'spacex competitors' is a silly. At best its a luxury competitor to SpaceX ride-share launches.

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#44

Post by panick21_ »

riffraff wrote: post #32
hubraumhugo wrote: post #4

I recently met a European space startup founder and was surprised to learn how much space innovation is happening in Europe with ESA. Europe wants to become less depended on SpaceX and NASA, and is heavily investing there. More funding + strong aerospace programs at universities like TU Munich has led to companies like ISAR Aerospace (SpaceX competitor), which is great to see.

there's a pretty great blog following european space news https://europeanspaceflight.com/ A lot has been happening in recent years with launchers once ESA broke the Ariane "chokehold".

Except of course the Ariane chockhold never existed for small rockets. Because Vega exists. And for large rockets the "chokehold" very much continues to exist and shows absolutely zero evidence of going away in the next decade.

So far the support for these small launchers has been mostly for new missions and nowhere near in the volume to support even two of these small launch companies. Specially if Vega also survives as a rocket.

Europe simply does not produce enough launches for these companies. And all of them will suffer from very low launch rates and non will be able to seriously compete for international payloads.

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#45

Post by anfogoat »

plantain wrote: post #33
cyclotron3k wrote: post #15

Would the data from this satellite be freely available to the public? I couldn't see anything obvious

Definitely not in anything like realtime, maybe an archive. There's a licence fee of 8000EUR/yr to access real-time EUMETSAT data. Welcome to Europe, where you pay for everything twice.

Hah! I don't believe this for a second. No, you need the 8k, a business entity (at the very least), five different licenses of some sort, and then some form of accreditation.

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#46

Post by [deleted] »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #4

I recently met a European space startup founder and was surprised to learn how much space innovation is happening in Europe with ESA. Europe wants to become less depended on SpaceX and NASA, and is heavily investing there. More funding + strong aerospace programs at universities like TU Munich has led to companies like ISAR Aerospace (SpaceX competitor), which is great to see.

[deleted]

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#47

Post by Beretta_Vexee »

mjanx123 wrote: post #29
lauri_jo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This data is from the third generation of Meteosats, which are the European meteorological satellites. A lot like GOES in the north-America. The main improvement is really significant improvement in resolution. The resolution is, depending on the channel, 9 times better than in the second generation. The main improvement in forecasting comes due to better information in the initial condition of the numerical weather…

I use windy.com for its 'compare models', the models can differ by ~2C sometimes

The difference in wind speeds can be quite significant, which greatly alters some forecasts.

The question is often when it will rain, not if it will rain.

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#48

Post by cess11 »

bitschubser_ wrote: post #16
cyclotron3k wrote: post #15

Would the data from this satellite be freely available to the public? I couldn't see anything obvious

I guess you will be able to access the data with copernicus (usually thy even provide raw L0 data)

If they'll publish it through Copernicus, it'll probably show up here:

https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#50

Post by pbhjpbhj »

cyclotron3k wrote: post #15

Would the data from this satellite be freely available to the public? I couldn't see anything obvious

There was a good CCC talk on pulling images from weather sats (and data from other satellites) - https://youtu.be/fM5w7bFNvWI?si=Dq6S6nYOE_frAd7b

It's been done before, but this was a great talk imo.

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